Friday, April 21, 2006
09:37 a.m.
I've been downloading something for 124 hours and it's still only at 78.7%!
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
11:16 a.m.
The humuhumunukunukuapuaa is the state fish of Hawaii... whoa!
(Or at least it was the state fish.. it might be again)
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
10:04 p.m.
Ah ha haha.. What a psycho! This makes me dislike Brokeback Mountain even more!
Article
Monday, March 6, 2006
10:41 p.m.
I can't get over what bullshit we have to read for school. Specifically theory art classes. I remember why I never end up reading anything....
Here's a sentence from my Hong Kong cinema class, talking about Jackie Chan, who's screen name Sing Long translates to "to become a dragon":
"In the course of Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, Drunken Master (1978), and other films, Chan must literally 'become a dragon' -learn to endure pain and to perfect his skill."
Literally? He literally BECAME a dragon in those movies? I don't think the special effects were good enough in 1978...
Monday, March 6, 2006
11:48 a.m.
I find the Oscars to be extremely anticlimactic... every year. I haven't felt like the people winning actually deserve their awared in a while. Clooney? Sure, he's good. But he's always good. And they just give it to him because they know he's good. By now he's just like "whelp, another for the shelf." Then they have to mix it up and give it to someone who's going to cry and go on forever like Reese so it doesn't look like they're playing favorites. Frankly, I never saw Capote or Crash, but meh. They didn't make enough hipe for me to want to see them. Munich was good and was totally ignored. Brokeback was... well.. pretty damn mediocre. (Sorry, Brian. I wasn't a fan) And I'd like to point out for the 13th time how TERRIBLE the score was and it's beyond me how it won. But then again, that stupid ass Pimp song won too.
And Memiors of a Geisha? That BOMBED and won 3 Oscars.
You know what my favorite movie of the year was? The Matador. It was outstanding. It wouldn't win best picture of course. It was an assassin comedy. But it was so great.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
02:49 p.m.
- 3 degrees. It's cold as hell outside! We took a trip to Chicago last night to IKEA and this place called Gameworks, Owned by Dreamworks. It was weirdly hi-tech. Like, huge plazma hi-def screens for games. There was this one where you get into these like, rollercoster seats and do... something.. with hot air balloons. I never figured out what exactly the idea of the game was, but it shot you up and down on these beams the chairs were attached to like 30 feet high. It was crazy. And there was an Initial D (terrible anime) racing game in like a driving simulator ride thingy. It was cool. I actually felt like I was going to wreck when I hit walls and stuff!
All that drive and unfortunately we didn't get anything from IKEA, but we pulled into the parking lot at 99,998 miles on my car. Now it's at 100,098 miles, come to think of it. It was exactly 100 miles home.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
03:14 p.m.
Shocking
But what's even more shocking is if you scroll all the way down, there's a picture of a woman covered in rose petals that looks like a dozen bleeding bulletholes on her chest.
Oh, crap. I guess it's a rotating image. Well maybe if you refresh it enough you'll see it.
Also... this version of the article is better...
Sunday, February 5, 2006
02:01 p.m.
The Matador Is such an awesomely fantastic movie. Probably my favorite this year (well, it's copyright 2004... but was just put out in limited release a week ago or so) Man, the trailor makes it look pretty generic.
If it's around where you live and can see it, you should. It will probably come out in wide release sooner or later.
So great.
Thursday, February 2, 2006
12:19 p.m.
Hooray for cartoon likenesses.
Thursday, February 2, 2006
02:56 a.m.
Computer reformat!
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
11:02 p.m.
Hey! One of my classes has all my film school friends in it. And one has all of my DIVAS friends in it. The last is yet to be determined!
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
03:56 p.m.
From MoveOn. A message to be sent out in emails that I instead put here.
Subject: The President Broke the Law
Hi,
President Bush admitted to personally authorizing thousands of allegedly illegal wiretaps, and he doesn't plan to stop. Circumventing the Constitution is serious business.
This is a big moment. People from across the political spectrum are standing together to protect the rule of law and the principles that are core to our identity as Americans.
Can you sign this petition to show Congress that Americans want a thorough investigation of the president's secret wiretapping program?
http://political.moveon.org/ruleoflaw/
Thanks!
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
12:17 p.m.
Yeah, ok. So this is the third time I've been called to work for Mtv on a shoot. The first time was over summerfest. They were totally unprofessional. Didn't tell us what the shoot was.. Didn't tell the camera crew what equipment to bring... etc etc etc... Then didn't pay us for like 3 months. In fact, I'm not sure if they ever paid the camera crew. They paid me before they had their check.
Then around Dave's birthday they called the same cameraa crew, who then called me again to work on it. It was for some mystery musical artist doing a concert in town (we think). We all thought it was POD who was at the Rave that night.. Anyway. So the only contact to it I had was with the camera guy. And he kept emailing me back saying "Well.. I don't know what's going on yet, I'll get back to you." "Still no word.. It's not like they haven't done this before..." (The camera crew has worked with Mtv several times before where they don't tel them anything either) And eventually they just never gave him anymore information and so we didn't do the shoot.
About a week ago I get a call from Mtv yet again saying "Hey, we're shooting a pilot about a 12 year undergrad, it's blah blah amount, we're putting you up in a hotel in Whitewater for a week because we're unsure of the hours, the shoot is from the 17th to the 24th." I said ok, I sent her my resume, she said "Great, I look forward to talking more with you!" And then days went by and I hear nothing back from them. I'm supposed to be in Whitewater right now.
Our theory is that they call people, don't tell them the information because they're all elite and don't want people to be in on their plans... And then STILL expect them to show up. So like.. they're standing in Whitewater right now like "Where's that PA?" Otherwise.. I don't know.. are they really cancelling all of these shoots? I know they didn't get another PA to take my place because then why would they keep calling me over and over? They also don't turn down a PA. They're not going to look at my resume and say "Hmmm.. you haven't done enough reality tv.. we're going to get someone else." I got a PA job when I had no experience and no one asked questions as to why I got hired.
So anyway, somewhere in Whitewater a crew from Mtv is standing around wondering who's going to carry the tripod. Or they're all so inredibly unorganized that they canceled the shoot all together. Who knows.
Monday, January 9, 2006
03:13 p.m.
Poor Dogs
Sunday, December 11, 2005
12:38 p.m.
I wonder if you can install a tiny camera in your glove compartment so that when someone breaks in for the third time and is rummaging around in it that I can record them and send it to television networks for broadcast. That's what I want for Christmas.
In animation news, I didn't finsh my project in time for the screening. I just needed a few more hours. Oh well I guess. The sound system in the room we projected in was terrible anyway. And they screwed up a good half the projects by starting them without picture, or without sound etc. Anyway, it's officially due for the class on the 20th or 21st. So I have some time.
Friday, December 9, 2005
02:05 p.m.
AH HA HA HA! There's an art magazine called "Juxtapoz". Hilarious.
That said, it's probably not a bad magazine. It's just funny. Film students who read this blog, you know what I'm talking about.
Sunday, December 4, 2005
03:25 a.m.
Animation Progress:
(Photo load intense)
Well I have like 25 seconds I think. I spent most of the day making the other fish for the project. The gold fish.
Here are some shots of the two finished fish. I don't think I'm going to end up making the goldfish get larger afterall... I don't have time to make the larger scale versions.
Monday, November 28, 2005
01:12 a.m.
Animation Progress:
I can in fact upload them through my printer, so that's what I've been doing.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
01:54 p.m.
Animation Progress:
I discovered a new problem with using my digital still camera, which is that I can only take one second's worth of pictures before my camera is full.. Therefore I have to move it and lose the shot.
I MAY have solved it by realizing that my printer has a card reader... but I'm not sure if I can get those pictures off of my printer and onto my computer, or if they can only be printed.
Friday, November 25, 2005
05:55 p.m.
Animation Progress:
Looking for drift wood at the beach for my set is a bad idea while it's snowing for the first time of the year. I was going 20 the whole way. And it was too cold and snowy and windy to go down to where the wood would be, if there was any. Then I managed to take a turn that sent me up about a 45% angle hill covered in snow with no salt yet. That was pretty scary....
I guess I'll get some tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
10:26 p.m.
It's been brought to my attention that the junior project screening is in fact 3 days earlier than I thought. D'oh.
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Illustrator Art Spiegelman Speaks at UWM
I wish it didn't cost money to go. Perhaps I'll have a spare $10 by then.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
09:33 p.m.
I need to start working on the goldfish model it seems.
Monday, November 21, 2005
12:01 p.m.
Animation Progress:
I've tried everything I can think of to light the wires. Even Christmas lights underneath the fish to throw just a little light onto them. I can't get them lit. Either that or some of the light goes to the wires, the rest and most of it goes to the blue screen in the back, making a huge glowing circle of light. I didn't shoot anything again because of this.
I did set up all the plants for the scene, and paint the blue walls a little more to fill in the gaps where I ran out of paint the first time. That's about it. Oh, and I decided to shoot on my digital still camera.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
10:03 p.m.
Huh. Apparently someone perposely sideswiped like 12 cars in 4 different locations at 9am today and "no one saw or heard anything"! Some kind of crazy mystery to the news casters. It happened right near the school.
In other news...
Animation Progress:
I can't get the lighting right to key out the blue screen on the fish animation. The wires under them are still visible. Thus far I've set up some plants on the stage, put up the blue screen pieces, and shot some test animations with the fish I made. So not REALLY a whole lot has happened since I last posted about it. Probably a bad thing. I guess for now I'm reading how to get the lighting right. Then hopefully shooting something usable before class on Monday.
hmm... I don't have a long fluorecent light to hang in front of the screen. Blue Screen for Dummies
Sunday, October 30, 2005
09:08 p.m.
So this weekend sealed the deal that I was not going to be able to shoot my original junior project idea of a sitting around and talking about "taboo" subjects movie (like Melvin Goes to Dinner, sort of Coffee and Cigarettes, the beginning of Resevoir Dogs kind of movie) but with 6 year olds. After I think 3 continuous weekends of trying to shoot, it wasn't going to work out.
After considering the fact that I have no further ideas but one, I decided to go with that one, despite being a really bad plan to start now. With maybe.. 5 weeks left until we have to show our projects at a screening, I plan to do a claymation! And if that's not time consuming enough, I plan to do a claymation of fish, which have to float. Therefore I have to greenscreen the background and the wires they will be attached to. Thus, the beginning of spending all of my waking free time working on it begins:
Animation Progress:
With one day's notice, my parents rigged up a stage for me that I asked for and sent dimensions for and drove the 2 hours here to set it up in my apartment:
It stands 6 and a half feet tall, and 4 feet or so wide, 2 feet deep. Three removable green screen foam core walls will go up on three of the four open corners for the set. I think I might put another piece of foam core with spray on adheasive with sand stuck to it on the stage floor, although I don't know how often you'll see the floor at all.
Tomorrow I go to class to tell her what I'm planning to do (She's REALLY not going to want me to do it), and hopefully get access to some blackwrap and some armature pieces they have extra for their expensive-ass armatures they bought. Then I'll have to see about making the fish models on... I don't know.. Tuesday probably, after my Calligraphy class.